Great Resources

July 01, 2006

If you've been thinking of putting Linux on one of your old machines, but you've heard that Linux installs are horrifyingly painful, PLEASE read this. That's what I used to think, too.

Not any more.

You will be shocked, delighted, and go "whoohoohoo!" all the way home.

Here's Ubuntu, running on my ooooold laptop, just as slick and easy as can be.

Ubuntu is incredibly simple to install and and use. You can install Ubuntu on an old machine (or whatever machine). Aside from the fact that nothing works 100% of the time, and wireless can be very wacky on any machine or operating system, I tell ya, installing Ubuntu will Just Work.

I repeat.

A Linux distro, Ubuntu, is incredibly slick to INSTALL and to use. You can be up and running on Linux today with no more effort than you'd expend making tea.

Now, I'm sure that many other distros are great and easy too. I understand from my techy friend and author of the first Java Certification Exams Simon Roberts who supervised but didn't actually do the install or tell me anything I didn't know, SuSE rocks and is gorgeous to boot. I understand that many of my fears about Linux installation actually are based on unusual situations like setting up wireless and really old or really new hardware. And are also just based on what I heard a long time ago that is not true anymore.

So anyway, it's probably not just Ubuntu that's easy and slick as a whistle. But I'm still very excited about this install.

I knew I would have to admit this sooner or later: I'm not really that knowledgeable about Linux. Not in a deep down kind of way. I have never and will never build my own distro and don't keep track of what GUI is my fave.

I'm not afraid of it or of using other operating systems--I used Solaris at Sun for three years, Mac at Great Plains Software, mostly Windows since then.

But you know, you hear these stories about installing Linux and it sounds like a quick hike up K2 would be easier. Packages. Drivers. Distros. Editing your BIOS. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH.

I installed, with the considerable help of my friend Simon, a Linux distro a few years ago. Red Hat 8 or something like that. Not horrible but not easy.

Time to try it again, though. I considered the Linspire distro but there seems to be some cost associated with it (forget that! ;> ) and there seemed to be a lot of buzz around Ubuntu. Plus you've GOT to love a distro with this name.

What I Installed On and the Internet SetupI bought this laptop, a Dell Latitude CPX, used for $400 from Half.com at least three years ago. I tried to check what its specs are and couldn't see it offhand, but you can figure it out generally. A roughly seven-year-old laptop. Defiitely not less.

I also installed Ubuntu on my four or five year old HP Pavilion 6835, 800 mhz machine with 300 MB memory or so.

I connected using a standard Ethernet card to my in-house standard Ethernet network. No wireless. (Wireless is a pain in the patookus on any system--at least in my experience.) The Ethernet card just went in the little slot on the left side of my laptop, and the dangly thing connected to the normal plug of the Ethernet connection. My desktop already had an Ethernet card installed.

How I Got the Install CDs

Like a breeze. very easy. I downloaded the CD from Ubuntulinux.org. But you can just order CDs too, off the web site. Totally for free, no shipping costs or anything. (Just one note--I ordered mine at least a couple weeks ago and haven't received them yet. Probably more like three weeks ago.)

How the Install Went

Like a breeze. I didn't partition the drives or do anything fancy. I just said yes, take over the computer, leave no data behind, etc.

I had the computers hooked up to the Internet. The install went out to the Ubuntu site and got extra files it needed, with no fuss or muss dealing with the connections.

I did nothing complicated. I entered what my name and password should be. That's about as complicated as it got.

Performance

Doesn't zip really fast on my laptop, and I haven't used the desktop a lot yet since I'm dithering about my monitor options. But it's definitely good enough. It's a 7+ year old machine.

What It's Like to UseVery similar to Windows and Solaris. I just played around with the various selections and it looked pretty easy. OpenOffice.org is there, under Applications > Office, just like you'd expect. I got on the Internet by choosing Applications > Internet. I found my files by choosing Places > Home Folder. It's all pretty logical. Most windowing applications aren't that complicated, and I find Solaris, Linux, and Windows all far more similar to each other than Macintosh.

What Else Works Besides InternetThe laptop doesn't have a CD burner, just a CD R drive, so I hooked up my USB Iomega CDRW external drive to it. I inserted a blank CD. And it just worked--a message popped up asking what I wanted to do. It was just like burning a CD on XP. I might have squealed with delight.

Printing worked fine, too. I hooked up the printer directly the USB port of my laptop. I chose System > Administration > Printing, double-clicked the new printer, answered the simple questions, and selected the printer I use. Didn't have to go hunt down drivers or anything.

And yes, the printing actually works. Just got a nice printout of this page on the printer. ;>

I haven't set up Thunderbird or anything for email since I'm not using this machine for that. I'm pretty pumped about the printing and the other hardware and networking stuff.

Installing Linux Just Worked.The install was a breeze. Internet and hardware just worked. The layout is logical. The software is free.

That's what the Open Document Format, or ODF, is all about. Lots of people and organizations want all documents to be in .odf rather than .doc or .xls format.

Most software you use creates documents in a propriety format. That means that the way the software creates the files is exclusive to the people who wrote that software. You can't use another program to open your own files, or at least your choices are very narrow. That means you need to buy software to continue to open files with those formats--if you want to be able to continue to access your own documents. Your thoughts, your meeting minutes, your personal budget spreadsheets, etc.--all need to be rented from the people who wrote the software.

Doesn't it seem kind of odd to have to keep paying for the right to get at documents you created?. It's like paying to rent a house you own. It's like having to pay a fee to get into your own closet for your own tube top.

OpenOffice.org, Sun, and other folks think everyone, including Microsoft, should write programs that output documents in Open Document Format. The instructions for creating programs that make ODF documents are available for anybody to use. That way, when all programs create documents in the same format, then you don't have to pay to open your documents. You can pick the application you want to use, there will be zillions of them, and some of them are free. You aren't dependent on one software program to get at your documents. OpenOffice.org uses ODF format.

June 27, 2006

Microsoft today announced the opening of a “test drive” so that people can see what Microsoft Office 2007 might look like when it finally goes on sale.

The OpenOffice.org Community invites potential upgraders to go one better - download the full OpenOffice.org 2 office suite today for a test drive, and if you like it, use it free for as long as you like. It’s the ultimate no-strings-attached test drive - if you enjoy the test drive, keep the car!

Unlike changing to Microsoft Office 2007, changing to OpenOffice.org 2 does not require learning how to use office software all over again. Indeed, reports have shown migration to OpenOffice.org 2 is 90% cheaper than migrating to Microsoft Office 2007.

June 26, 2006

This is another story about change, and tangentially a story about Stevie Nicks.

I’ve already mentioned Louis, who when switching to OpenOffice.org from Microsoft Office, simply told his users that there would be a big upgrade. No mention of a different office suite program. ;> I love that story.

Here’s another story from the other side of the country. The school district’s latest levy had failed, so they had to cut a couple hundred thousand dollars from the budget. Naturally, there was a big meeting to talk about how to do this.

The school district IT director, Randy, was taking notes during the meeting, and his notes were being projected for everyone to see.

Randy said, “So, one way we could save a huge amount of money would be to cut Microsoft Office and switch to OpenOffice.org.”

"Well,” Randy says, “Here’s a question. What program am I using to take notes?”

There was a rousing chorus of “Microsoft Word, of course.”

"Nope,” replied Randy, with what I can only assume was just a hint of a satisfied smirk. (I would have smirked. Randy might be a better person than me.) “It’s OpenOffice.org Writer.”

Wow! No way! But it’s so much like Word!

Randy continued. “And you know what? For the last two years, you’ve been receiving Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents from me that I created in OpenOffice.org and saved in Microsoft Office format."

More murmuring, surprise, delight, etc.

And so they voted overwhelmingly to switch to OpenOffice.org and save a pantsload of money.

This is, by the way, took place recently in the Seattle area, in Microsoft’s back yard.

It's yet another story showing that Change itself, uppercase, is often what we primarily fear; not the actual new thing that’s going to happen. As the song goes, I've been afraid of changin' cuz I built my life (and my complex mail merges and spreadsheets) around you.

For those of you out there fighting the good fight and evangelizing OpenOffice.org, I think this story has some great lessons. Don’t try to convince people ahead of time. Just start using it within your IT department, or personally, and expose people to it without telling them what it is. Install it on people’s computers and let them play with it. Let the potential users enjoy sitting in the nice open source hot tub. Let them learn to like it without knowing much about it. Let them come to the conclusion that....hey...you know, this isn't all that different, and we sure could save a lot of money switching to it...hmmm....

Try leading with the product, not with the idea of the product, or with Change.

For those who are encountering resistance transitioning--I know that OpenOffice.org isn’t the same as Microsoft Office. It’s different. The Venn overlap is maybe 70%. But when you have to cut a couple hundred thousand from your budget, do you do it by cutting Microsoft Office, or by cutting salaries and books and benefits and other things that really matter? )

OpenOffice.org as a Techwriter's Tool for Making BooksLet's get this out of the way up front. I use Framemaker for all my OpenOffice.org workbooks and books. It's just a better tool for books than both OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Word. Framemaker has conditional text, extraordinary cross-referencing and numbering tools, solid, reliable layout features, conditional text (which I use extensively), and much more.

So if you're using Framemaker now, you like it and understand it, you use a lot of cross-references, and you do books of even moderate complexity, I say to you, don't be an open source hero. Stick with Framemaker.

If you're not sure whether you need Framemaker, read on and see what you think.

If you're on Microsoft Word, the page flow, random application of styles you never created, and cross-reference truncation has got to be driving you crazy, so I invite you to read on, as well.

(If you're interested in a full workbook about these topics, see the Professional Techwriter workbook here. )

OpenOffice.org Professional Book Production Strengths

Styles rock. They have immense power for just all the things you'd expect from styles, as well as the sequence in which page styles (master pages in Frame) are used.

Styles in general. Styles are really well implemented in OpenOffice.org. You choose Format > Styles and Formatting, you pick what kind of style to create, and you go nuts. Use styles in a standard, consistent manner and you won't go wrong.

Page styles: To specify the layout such as type of headers and footers, margins, backgrounds, etc., you use page styles. You create them the same way you'd create a paragraph or character style. Page styles are pretty solid. You apply them by double-clicking the page style in the stylist, then switching from one page style to another with a manual break or one of two automatic approaches. You can also restart page numbering with all three ways.

Switching page styles: As mentioned, you can switch from one page style to another by inserting a manual break, or automatically. One way is to set up a paragraph style like Heading1 to always start at the top of a new page, with a particular page style. (Framemaker doesn't have this.) For instance, if you always start a new section with the paragraph style Heading1 and use the page style FirstPage, then you can make that happen automatically and never think about applying page styles.

You can also set up a page style to be applied once, then automatically switch to another page style. Just as you might set up Heading1 to automatically switch to BodyText as the next paragraph style, you can set up FirstPage to automatically switch to LeftRight as the next page style.

Automatic PDF: If your department is on a budget, don't worry about purchasing high-priced copies of Adobe Distiller. You can make PDFs of your documents automatically. Just choose File > Export as PDF, name the file, and set your options.

Master documents: Master documents are the equivalent of master files and book files. They work. They're not slick and powerful, but they work. They also don't crash and corrupt the subdocuments. They're just a bit tricky; you have to do them the right way. You have to insert a Text Item component between each subdocument in order to be able to apply formatting to the subdocuments, but it's not hard to do. To create a master document, just choose File > New > Master Document and use the tools in the window to add files, TOCs, text items, etc.

Automatic captions: You can set up OpenOffice.org to automatically insert captions for all your graphics, tables, etc. They're numbered separately and you can have whatever word you want in front of the caption: Table, Object, Item, Illustration, etc. Choose Tools > Options > Writer > AutoCaption.

Tables of contents: Tables of contents are in generally pretty good. They're linked to the headings you set up in outline numbering (see Weaknesses) and tabs are included by default. I would say they're just as powerful as Frame but easier to set up. You have a lot of formatting power through styles.

Better drawing tools: It's not hard to beat the drawing tools in Framemaker, but OpenOffice.org does it by a mile. Use a frame (Insert > Frame) to group the items, or else just choose File > New > Drawing and make a separate diagram. Then copy and paste into a frame in Writer or export the drawing to a JPG or other format. If you do flow charts or diagrams, the connector line tools alone might be worth using Writer as your book production tool. (Or alternately use Draw to create diagrams that you export to GIF and import into Framemaker.)

OpenOffice.org Professional Book Production Weaknesses

Cross references: Generally, they're solid if not all that slick to implement. However, two issues. One, there's no way, as in Framemaker, to search for broken cross-references, though the cross reference does show up as an empty gray box. Sometimes it's not even an empty gray box, it looks fine. So that's a big issue.

Also, if you want to do cross-references between subdocuments in a master document, you can't select them from a list—you have to keep track of what they are and type the name of the reference in manually. AND the cross-reference doesn't show up correctly in the individual document, it's just a blank gray box. You can see it correctly only from the master document, which is read-only. Grr.

Outline numbering: Outline numbering is actually kind of a powerful tool, and not that tough to implement. Outline numbering is how you tell the program that ChapterTitle is your top-level paragraph heading style, Heading1 is the next level down, and so on. From that you get running headers and footers, automatic chapter numbering, etc. You can also have only one paragraph style at each level, so there goes the idea of having two paragraph styles, Heading1NewPage and Heading1.

Indexes: Indexes work, but they're a little weird and it takes a while to get used to how they work.

Chapter-page numbering: You can set up chapter-page numbering, such as 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 2-1, and so on. You can apply chapter-page numbering to captions. You can have the chapter number in headers and footers. (Once you've set up outline numbering.) However, you can't have it show up correctly in the table of contents for the second level heading on down. Thus, you can either forego tables of contents, forego detailed tables of contents, or forego chapter-page numbering.

Running headers and footers: Running headers are easy, once you've set up outline numbering. Just go to the header or footer and choose Insert > Fields > Other, select the Document tab, select Type column, select the Chapter item, and choose what kind of information you want to insert. “Chapter” just means section, and you can specify what level section with the Layer field in the lower right corner.

There's just one problem. The running header or footer reflects the most recent heading. If you're writing about French Bread on page 1, and have a section title about Rye Bread halfway down the page on page 2, then the running header at the top of page 2 will be French Bread. It doesn't see anything on the current page, only what has already appeared in the document. If you had a running footer on page 2, it would show Rye Bread because by then Rye Bread would have appeared in the document.

This is an issue only with heading level 2 on down, since usually your top level heading will start at the top of a new page or document so quick switches aren't an issue. Therefore you can use only running headers for your top-level heading; you can use them for any levels but only in the footer, or you can use a separate page style for every chapter and type in all your headers and footers manually. The first and second are the best options.

Variables: Let's say you're putting together a huge document for a proposal, and the value like Contractor and Price and ContractorIDNumber appear several places throughout the book. Or you're doing a book for three different products and you want to be able to easily change the product name from BadgersRUs to MarmotMania. In Framemaker and in OpenOffice.org you can create variables to handle this. However, you can't share them across documents in OpenOffice.org, even if they're part of the same master document. You can't import them from one doc to another or from one doc to all other docs in a master document. You can do that in Framemaker.

In Conclusion...

Use styles. Use page styles. Take advantage of automatic page style application/switching. Set up outline numbering. Be flexible with your formatting requirements (notably with running headers and footers, and chapter-page numbering). Be very structured with the titles of your cross-references. Don't expect Framemaker. Do some test documents.

If all that sounds good, then OpenOffice.org could be a good tool for you and your group.

June 22, 2006

What's important is pretty much anything else. What your organization is doing: research, services, saving lives, preserving order, education. Preserving the rain forest. Rebuilding New Orleans. Job retraining. Heck, you could argue that a good pumpkin pie is essentially more important than software.

OK, the office suite software helps you do all those things I listed and a million more. But I want to point out that our goal in our eight hours a day is not to use software. It's everything else.

All right. So now think about this.

OpenOffice.org is free.

Other office suites are not.

You switch to OpenOffice.org, and you or your organization is suddenly not spending $500, or $50,000, or $5 million on your office suite licenses.

Add up all the other people or organizations who are no longer spending that money on an office suite, and suddenly we're into some serious cash.

Think about how much your city police force spends on office suite software, and about how that money could probably do some good if it were spent on, say, salaries for additional police.

Think about what that research facility down the road spends on software. Compared to the money they spend for their equipment, maybe not much, but it's money probably better spent on upping the salaries for a few poor post-docs than on office suite software.

Think about how much money the federal government spends on office suite software. Now fantasize about how you would redirect that money if you were in charge.

Amazon saved $17 million when they switched to Linux. Same principle--pay less for something that's not part of your core business.

Think about how much your state spends on office suite software for schools, and how many more teachers and books that money could buy.

A lot.

Education is one of the most important places to think about OpenOffice.org. Education is, to put it mildly, important. Plus, third graders aren't likely to complain that they're used to how Word does styles and they don't want to switch. They're open to anything new. And education isn't exactly overfunded. I live in Colorado which is either 49th or 47th in the nation in funding for education.

For educators, here's an interesting article on trends this year, including OpenOffice.org.

For anyone thinking about upgrading to Vista, here's an important blog. Dave Rosenberg states that Vista gives you an opportunity to really compare the actual cost and the actual benefits, and he quotes Jon Oltsik from Enterprise Strategy Group."

So just think about the value. Think about how much money you're spending on your office suite, and what you could do with that money that would be more important.

Ben and Christian are doing great stuff to promote OpenOffice. Next stop, Oprah? (I see a show with a digital divide theme where she gives away a thousand totally open source laptops to screaming audience members.)

June 08, 2006

I'm getting tense about the book delay so thought I'd just share what the poop is.

The problem is that this is yet ANOTHER delay. Circa 2003, I was going to do a 1.x book and that got posted on Amazon. Then we decided against it, but Amazon wouldn't take it off their page no matter how many times I wrote to them. So my apologies to those of you who ordered the book three years ago.

Now, what's up with the 2.0 book? I am proud to say I am done with my part except for the index, which is not in any way critical path. It's my publisher who needs to get the book on the schedule to be proofed and put through the production process, and hasn't done so yet. Apparently there's the perception that OpenOffice.org books don't sell that well, and so my book is getting pushed down the schedule after other books from the same publisher.

We of course know it's going to ROCKET off the shelves. ;> (Fingers crossed, at least.)

I've also sent my editor many title possibilities, based on your suggestions, and the Open Road/Route 66 theme. He's working on that.

So--that's the deal. I'm badgering my editor frequently but that it's kind of out of my hands.

On the bright side, there is some progress on making PDFs of the book available for purchase--$5 here, $10 there, etc. I'll announce that as soon as it's available, but I don't want to give a date. It'll probably be before the paper book.

If you want to post a comment about how you and 384 of your closest friends and family members will be buying several copies each of the paper book, then of course feel free. ;> I'll see if that will make the 'powers that be" budge on the proofing/production schedule. But I'm not making this post to try to manufacture a public horde of checkbook-wielding supporters, though; really just wanted to explain.

May 30, 2006

STAR OFFICE 8 as a office software package is one of the finest alternatives to Microsoft Office, not that Microsofts version is bad in any way, its just that it costs a great deal more and in some cases does not deliver the same features as this particular product.

But you may be wondering why would I pay for STAR OFFICE 8 when clearly OPEN OFFICE 2.0 is a freeware which means it does not cost a thing ? this is a question that we will answer in this article.

Additionally what other features does STAR OFFICE 8 have that are of interest compared to other products ?

Before we answer these questions it is worth noting that with over 50 million downloads including OPEN OFFICE, you should know that it is a highly rated package, that has brought much satisfaction amongst the populace, and therefore I myself have adopted STAR OFFICE to write this review.

Update June 8th -- the grass-roots approach of just installing it for people is one approach. Just put it on your friend's computers. See Mike's blog entry.

I love interesting information about how people think.

Specifically, I love real-world stuff about how people behave in groups, how individuals come to decisions--it's all really amazing and so not what you'd expect.

There was some fascinating stuff in the Sunday NYT from May 14th (I was just catching up over the weekend) about how what makes us happy is not what we think makes us happy. We think certain things should make us happy, and when they don't, we figure, well, maybe a bigger X or a cooler Y will make us happy. It's really the day-to-day stuff, like your car breaking down or coffee with a friend, that affects our happiness, not the big house (since things and events give less happiness with each exposure) or the big events (traumatic attacks, even) that make us happy or sad, overall.

One of my favorite quotes is from Iris Murdoch, who was right on without the psychological research. Roughly, the quote is "Happiness in life is dependent on having a continuous series of small treats."

I meant that introduction to be a little shorter but that topic is one of my favorites. Its theme, however, strongly relates to Dan Russell's guest blog on Kathy Sierra's Passionate Users blog. He talks about how essentially, you can convince people to do stuff all day long but they won't actually do it unless you make it reallllllly easy. It's the lockjaw study you might have heard of--students were shown a film on the perils of lockjaw, and were told that shots were available for free in the college health services center. They pretty much all said that Yes! They believed the film! and their beliefs had changed. And yet....3% of the students ever showed up for their shots.

Didn't matter whether it was a film about lockjaw dangers, a letter on lockjaw dangers, whatever--people were told and they believed it was the right thing to do, but they didn't do it.

What made the difference?

Handing out a map to the health center, and asking students after the film to make appointments to get their shots. Then 28% of students who viewed the film showed up to get shots.

Yes.

It's the little things.

This is one issue that plagues the open source/OpenOffice.org community. We wave our arms and jump around and shout about our frustrations and say "It's obvious! It's the best choice! Individuals can save hundreds! Schools can save millions! Governments can save zillions! It's easy to download? Why don't they switch?????"

Well, frustrated open source folks, take a deep breath. It's not that people don't believe that free is better. That's not the whole issue, at any rate. We might all be convincing gazillions of people a day that clearly, they could save money and licensing hassles with OpenOffice.org or Ubuntu. But unless they have a map and an appointment (or, better, have it installed on their computer), conversion isn't going to happen very quickly.

So how do we make it soooo easy for people to use open source software? How do we get 28% of the people we talk to to actually switch?

One approach of course is to get Oprah to give away Linux laptops at every show. That would be cool.

The new deal with Dell and Google might help a tad, depending on what Google software is preinstalled on those Dell computers.

I'm a little sleepy still and recovering from Memorial Day weekend so I must confess I'm not chock full of implementation ideas. But I wanted to get this out there and ask for suggestions. Get the idea-mill turning. Put the emphasis on the little things that are really important.

And now I must go have a cup of cocoa, to get my day started with a small treat.

May 25, 2006

I've written an article for TechTarget on the general theme of using the customization tools in OpenOffice.org to make life better for users. Whether they're just using OpenOffice (or StarOffice), or switching from Microsoft Office, you can customize toolbars, menus, and keyboard shortcuts to make life easier.

Here's how it starts--thanks to Louis for the story and to Scott for his pivotal role.

"One of my blog readers reports that, when he migrated his organization to OpenOffice.org, he didn't even tell the users that they were switching to a different office suite. He just said that there was going to be a big upgrade. Then, he and his migration cohorts modified the OpenOffice.org menus and toolbars to resemble the Microsoft Office layout and phrasing as much as possible (without violating copyright, of course) and gave that configured version to the users. He reports very few problems with the migration.

"I love that story. Is the biggest problem with change simply that it is change?"

On that note, I want to also emphasize that there are a lot of other businesses out there providing services and products you can pay for, for OpenOffice.org and StarOffice. Open source doesn't necessarily mean unsupported. If you need someone to convert your MS documents, train your users, support your users, help or do the initial installation, or just create a few templates, just google around and you'll likely find a few organizations ready to help.

May 10, 2006

"The
industry's two major office suites, Microsoft Office and
OpenOffice.org, will soon be releasing new versions. Recent research
into these versions by large government departments indicates that for
many sites, it is now 10 times cheaper to migrate to the new
OpenOffice.org 2.0 than upgrading to Microsoft Office 12."

April 29, 2006

I'm back from a fun week of training in Frankfort, Kentucky where I learned more about desktop support, what to wear to the Derby, and "Doctor Hobo" than I ever dreamed possible.

Here are a few things we talked about implementing that I wanted to reinforce as very useful--especially if you have a lot of users who might not be wild about the change, and want to help ensure consistency and ease-of-use.

Templates, templates, templates! Make the templates, set'em up in clearly named categories, and point users at them. For best results, store the templates centrally on a server. To make a template, choose File > Templates > Save, or just copy it to the templates directory of your OOo installation on the server. To point users to that location, choose Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Paths, select the Templates line, click Edit, and add a location. See more in this blog on templates.

Configure the menus and toolbars! You can make menus that say "Admissions Department" and it's not going to take any training at all to get the folks in the Admissions Department to use that menu. Then stick whatever you want in there. Choose Tools > Customize to modify or create menus and toolbars. When you add items, you can choose to rename the menu or toolbar item so that it says "Use This For Printing Envelopes" or even "Diane, This Is For You". See more in this blog on toolbars.

To skip blank Address2 lines, just use the mongo mail merge wizard: Tools > Mail Merge Wizard. This is a bit complex so just set it all up with the content and the database users need, then make a template and point them to the template. You might need to fuss with the database setup to be sure that the users' systems recognize it if you've got the template and database on a central server; one thing to try is Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org Base > Database and register the database. See more in this blog on the big wizard.

If you have a lot of forms with fill-in fields (the usual gray fields that pop up to let you enter something), consider creating a form from File > New > XML Form Document. This gives you the data entry form tools but you can use them easily for forms that just need to be filled in and printed, or filled in and saved. You can create dropdown lists for instance that make it easier for the people filling in the fields to know what the correct possible values are. When you create the form, make it a template too, then point users to it. Here's a blog on tweaking forms created with the wizard, which isn't exactly what you might want but it's a step in the right direction.

Those were the big implementation ideas that we bandied about and I think are darned useful for anyone who needs to work with a lot of users. If you have other ideas along these lines, let me know!

April 15, 2006

Here's an interesting article on what's going to happen with Google, Writely, OpenOffice, Vista, MS Office, and the rest of the gang. The hook is the latest announcement from Google, the Google Calendar.

April 14, 2006

By the way--the question about documentation and the answer give the impression that the only documentation out there on OpenOffice.org is from a few overworked techwriters. Soooo not the case. Books have been around for years. Just hit Amazon or your local bookstore and you'll find my books and books from many others. There are many resources for anyone learning OpenOffice.org.

April 03, 2006

It's time to report in on how the OpenOffice 2.o book is doing! I'm glad to report that I've got pretty much 90% of it done. I'm going to let it sit for a bit, do some other projects, then come back to it and finish up. I think "spring" will still apply since June 21st is the first day of summer. ;'>

First, thanks again to all who gave me great tips on items to include in the OpenOffice 2 book. I have incorporated the suggestions that I have room for (it's primarily a beginner/intermediate book). I'm hammering home styles, I'm trying to make it very easy for people to integrate templates, I'm talking about graphics and frames, lots of stuff on tables, autotext and shortcuts are definitely in, and I'm enhancing the chapter on working with MS Office. And of course I'm doing lots of mail merge tools, with tips on creating a separate Envelopes printer, as well as using the Secret Mail Merge Louis told me about. I'm also going to add Ross's excellent suggestion to try nested frames. http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2006/03/i_want_to_know_.html

Some topics are covered fully, some are going to be covered briefly either in the appropriate chapter or in a "How to get started on the top 20 things I didn't have room to include in this book" appendix. ;>

I'm now posting a couple sample chapters, in their DRAFT state. I'd like feedback, and I'd like to just send them out there for anyone to use, for those who ordered two years ago because Amazon posted the book WAY too early. ;>

Here are the caveats and review guidelines.

CAVEATS:

This is DRAFT material. I've been back through it but it hasn't been edited or proofed.

I haven't completed the chapter on working with Microsoft Office users. I need to research more specific problems and solutions, though I think the tips in the chapter will take people a long way.

You can use these chapters yourself but of course not reprint them, publish them under your own name, etc.

Feel free to just download and read. If in addition you'd like to comment, please follow these guidelines.

It's too early for typos, so you don't need to worry about those.

Tell me other things you'd like to know about.

Tell me anything that's wrong.

I'd love to hear about solutions you've come up with or tips you'd like to contribute.

March 29, 2006

We all know that ODF, OpenDocument Format, is great. You don't
have to pay other companies to access files you created yourself. (I
talked more about this in “Microsoft Owns Your Tube Top.”)

OpenOffice.org documents are in ODF format. Great. So you can read
ODF documents with OpenOffice.

Um....OK. But we want world domination on this. We want to be able
to email ODF documents around to everyone, and everyone can open them
for free. Without having to download OpenOffice if they
don't want to.

We can already do that with PDF files. That's because of the Adobe
PDF Reader program that's built into pretty much every computer on
the planet.

So what do we need for ODF files? Well, clearly, an ODF reader
application.

Wily Yuen tipped me off to this. There's a new
extension in development for FireFox called ODFReader.

I've been having a problem that some of you might sympathize with--getting posts to show up in Technorati. So as a cheater, I've created this post that links to a bunch of posts that I don't think have been showing up. Not all of them like links to current discussions or issues, just the ones I think are important that have been missed.

So I'm sorry this isn't new content, but perhaps somewhere in the last six months there's something useful that Technorati didn't let you see the first time around.

PDF, with linked articles on PDF presentations, and using hyperlinked PDFs. That post is particularly interesting since you can generate PDFs from linked OpenOffice.org documents, and the links carry over to the PDF.

Using the wonderful Web Wizard (that's the techtarget article, here's the blog link) for creating web sites from existing OpenOffice, Microsoft, and graphics documents. You can also use it for PDF batch convert.

Switching to OpenOffice.org, or any open source product, means you can spend the budget leftover on something important. Education, firefighters--anything that's more important than using Microsoft Office.

March 22, 2006

Update: See The Linux Box for more ready-made OpenOffice Impress templates.

One
of the biggest losses people experience when switching to open source
is the loss of all those cool templates. They are, as the song says,
a hard habit to break.

The
good news is, you usually don't have to break the habit. (Unless
you've been using Publisher, unfortunately, and you can't open
Publisher files in anything—not even Word.) Here's how to keep on
using the same templates you know and love; find new ones, or create
your own in Draw and Writer.

You Can Still Use Your Own Word Templates and Any Others You Can Find

Here's
where you might really start to enjoy the value of OpenOffice.org's
compatibility with Microsoft Office.You
can still use all those Microsoft Office templates you got with the software. (Assuming the license doesn't forbid it--just putting that in just in case. ;> ) In OpenOffice.org, just choose File > Open, go to Program Files\Microsoft Office\templates (or wherever) and find the one you want.

And
you can google around for more. I googled for “postcard templates”
and came to this nice site from HP. The templates are available not
just in Publisher but in Word. Click the image to see it larger if you like.

I decided to download the postcard template and the brochure template. I clicked on each; here's what it looked like to choose the brochure template.

Once the files were downloaded, I just went to OpenOffice.org, chose File > Open, and opened them in OpenOffice Writer.
Here's what the postcard template looks like.

I
modified it according to my own information; it was relatively easy.
Here's what that looks like. Here's the file itself. Right-click on the link and choose to save link as.

So
that's really all there is to it. Use your own or find new ones. There are a zillion free templates
out there, and you can use the Word format templates (or Powerpoint,
or Excel) in OpenOffice.org. Just google for the free ones, or ask friends where they are.

Making Your Own Postcards, Brochures, etc. in Draw and Writer

Now, that's not all the fun. If you want to create a postcard yourself, let's say in Draw, you can go ahead and do that, too. Or a brochure, or anything with specific measurements.

(You can do this in Writer to; I'm just showing it in Draw since the previous section was all about Writer.)

You need to know three things.- Choose Format > Page and click the Page tab to set the overall page size and orientation.

- Use the drawing tools like the text box and shapes to create the borders of the items in the document. Choose View > Toolbars > Drawing to bring up that toolbar.

- Select any item, right-click, and choose Position and Size. In the window that appears, click the Position and Size tab. will let you specify that the border of the postcard box, for instance, is 4x6. Remember to mark or unmark the Keep Ratio checkbox depending on whether you want to change one measurement of the object or both.

So let's do an example.

I'm going to create another postcard template. So I choose File >
New > Drawing to create a new Draw document. I choose Format >
Page, click the Page tab, and set the page size and margins. I'll
need a document that's like the first one or the second one,
depending on what I'm printing on.

Option 1: A document with no margins, 6 across by 8 high (for two
4x6 postcards), and portrait orientation

Option 2: A document with half-inch margins, 7 across by 9 high
(for two 4x6 postcards with two half-inch margins around the
outside), and portrait orientation

Next, I create a box to show me where the content should go. I
just click on the rectangle tool in the Drawing toolbar and draw the
box. I don't want a fill in it so I make the fill Invisible.

I right-click on the border of the rectangle, choose Position and
Size, and click on the Position and Size tab. I choose 6 wide by 4
high, and unmark the Keep Ratio checkbox.

I put the edge of the box against the edge of where the postcard
paper will end.

At this point, I make a template of it, so I can get at it again.
See this blog on templates. If you want my document to download and make into a template, here it is. Right-click on the link and choose to save link as.

Now I just make one version of the postcard, the way I want it. I
put the content in the box, keeping in mind I need a bit of space
between the text and the edge of the paper.

I copy the postcard and paste it, and drag the pasted version down
to the bottom end of the document.

And now I just delete the boxes.

That's all there is to it. A little bit of work to set up, but the
template takes care of that; you only need to do it once.

March 20, 2006

These are just some random ideas for when I finally find the Unlimited Money, Time, and Influence Dimension.

Here's what I've been thinking about lately.

We're at one of those points in
“Crossing the Chasm” where there's going to be a big change soon
and the General Populace is going to start using Linux in the next
couple years. I hope. There's no technical reason for it not to happen. The distros are cute. The installs are
in many cases very easy.

But, of course, that's not the whole story.

When I tell my friend Betsy or my parents or other folks not in the technical field that Linux, or OpenOffice.org, or another open source program would be great, they get a little glassy-eyed and start to shake if I talk about non-Microsoft products for too long. It's just not something they believe in. They know intellectually that I make my living in open source and understand that free is cheaper than not free. But don't really believe it. They just don't feel that open source products are an option.

Reasoning is all very well, but as someone very wise once said, "You can't reason someone out of a position they haven't been reasoned into." Which is a very reasonable statement (pun intended). I've certainly got my emotional topics that reason won't trump, period. We can talk all day long about how open source is great and so much cheaper, but that doesn't get to people's amygdala. It doesn't make them feel like they want it or can use it. It doesn't make them accept that yes, cheaper can be better.

Plus, there's no "get an easy cool Linux laptop with support and warantees now!" web site for them to go to.

So I fantasize about how to make people fall in love with open source.

Or, if not fall in love, then help people feel good about it, feel comfortable, and feel excited about it.

And I think about the ultimate pre-installed open source computer web site.

In my fantasy, with the aforementioned money and
people, I would do a couple things.

I would create The Warm, Fuzzy, Fun, Exciting, and Absolutely Cool
Linux/Open Source Site, For Everyone But Especially Small Businesses and Regular
End Users Who Are Not Using Linux Yet.

And I would Shamelessly Pursue Celebrity Endorsements and Product Placement.

About the SiteI would create a different Linux site for people who don't know or care about open source but care about everything you can do with a normal computer save money, do email, edit photos, build web pages, rip CDs, and so on.

In my fantasy, the site would be off the charts on fun, easy, and incredibly cool. The site should make people feel like walking around in Target makes me feel (I have a serious Target addiction). Or Ikea.
Just fun and more-or-less mainstream and cute.

The site and associated products and ads would make it blindingly obvious millions of people are using open source software and having a good time doing so.

Sell all the PDA and music-playing
devices I can—and borrow from Apple's playbook by providing free
engraving.

Create community with contests and
prizes, featured Linux stories, and all sorts of things to make
people feel as proud of their Linux computer as they feel of their
Ipod.

I would of course hire Kathy Sierra to make all this happen and
create passionate Linux users.

Celebrity Endorsements, Product Placements, and All That StuffWhat made people stop smoking so quickly in the 90s after yeaaaars of smoking? Peer pressure. Who can get people to buy millions of copies of an item with a wave of her hand? Oprah!

I would get on Oprah. I don't know
how—Mark Shuttleworth is pretty hunky, so we could maybe work the beefcake angle. Maybe we could get Jonathan Schwartz to write a fake autobiography. Or we just
make the pitch along the whole digital divide, make a better society, line. At any rate, we
get on Oprah, and at the end of the show Oprah gives away free Linux
laptops and everybody dances.

Microsoft Is for Fuddy-Duddies. Ads and placements and stories in Seventeen, ads on MySpace.com, Linux books on the tables in Urban Outfitters. (It's a stretch, that last one.) Teens and college students, in theory, don't have a lot of money, and in theory want to rebel against established norms. And, of course, are generally more comfortable with computers.

Product placement in TV shows and movies (maybe ET used VOIP on Linux to phone
home?), anything. Mac has a
huge product placement thing goin' on; I'd figure out what they do and
do it (with all the money from the venture capitalists, yes ;> ).

Now, I'm not actually going to do this.
Not this year, anyway. Got to finish a book, got to go do some training, and there aren't that many programmers or designers around who will do my bidding. If you decide to do
this, though, please remember me, bring me on as your official
trainer. Oh, and I want to be on Oprah. ;>

March 19, 2006

Yep, that's the statement from the French. OpenOffice.org is 150 times cheaper than Microsoft Office. And this is the French tax office that's switching, so you've got to think they've got the numbers right.

"The French tax agency claims that upgrading its 80,000 desktops to Office XP would cost €29.5 million, but switching to OpenOffice.org only €200,000."

Also:

"The tax agency has supported its open source products in-house in the past, but is now contracting it to external companies to ensure quality of service across the board.

"The contractors make a barrier between me and the complexity of the open source community. Today, I can contact the open source community if I want support, but there's no engagement or commitment. Contractors provide that commitment and manage the community and smaller companies that provide the support," says Lapeyre."

That's what the Open Document Format, or ODF, is all about. Lots of people and organizations want all documents to be in .odf rather than .doc or .xls format.

Most software you use creates documents in a propriety format. That means that the way the software creates the files is exclusive to the people who wrote that software. You can't use another program to open your own files, or at least your choices are very narrow. That means you need to buy software to continue to open files with those formats--if you want to be able to continue to access your own documents. Your thoughts, your meeting minutes, your personal budget spreadsheets, etc.--all need to be rented from the people who wrote the software.

Doesn't it seem kind of odd to have to keep paying for the right to get at documents you created?. It's like paying to rent a house you own. It's like having to pay a fee to get into your own closet for your own tube top.

OpenOffice.org, Sun, and other folks think everyone, including Microsoft, should write programs that output documents in Open Document Format. The instructions for creating programs that make ODF documents are available for anybody to use. That way, when all programs create documents in the same format, then you don't have to pay to open your documents. You can pick the application you want to use, there will be zillions of them, and some of them are free. You aren't dependent on one software program to get at your documents. OpenOffice.org uses ODF format.

March 03, 2006

You
hear about the new software that's coming. And there it is, on your computer.

You freak out, of course, because you've
been working in Microsoft Office for ten years, you know just how
things work, there are tweaks you've made you're very proud of, and
all this work and knowledge is going to go down the frickin' drain.
Because of those geeks in IT! AAAARGH!!! You'd like to take your computer and stuff it down the throat of the person who made the decision in the first place.

Now you, as the IT director, know that Jane can probably figure
out a lot of it on her own. Given the right attitude, at least; the confidence
that she can figure it out. But she's pissed. And she has huge
deadlines looming and she's going to just keep working in Microsoft
Office. In spite of all the lovely memos you send out about
OpenOffice.org being the preferred software. Or she might just not do the work because she doesn't think she can. Or get halfway through
her work but she has a question, she can't find the solution, you
haven't given her a book, she's not used to online help, she's not
the type who habitually googles online forums, she doesn't know that right-clicking or checking all the menus will turn up something useful, and she's frustrated
and wants to go home and do the eight hours of work she has to do
there.

And you're frustrated because you think
it's easy, workable software and you don't know why everyone keeps
calling you with questions.

They're not all calling you because
they can't figure it out. They're calling to say “You plunked this
on my desk, you didn't give me any help, you didn't ask my opinion or
acknowledge that this will take some work, and I am going to make you
PAY.”

Some of them, anyway. Enough to make a lot of people pissed and frustrated.

This is how it works when you bring in
the software first without any documentation or training.

Now, there are others who might not be making noise and might not mind the
change that much, but who really cannot figure out the mail merge and
would like to be shown how. Or they have specific questions like how to create postcards in Draw, now that they don't have Publisher anymore.

And--well, frankly, it's fair when you bring in something new to tell people how to use it. You wouldn't buy your parents a new computer and drop it off without at least making sure they knew how to do the basics.

So what do you do about that? About the change aspect, the frustration that can come up, and just about how to show people the new ways to do their jobs.

Now, keep in mind that this isn't only about the software. It's also about change.

Not surprisingly, I think it's really
important that new users have training. Before they have to start
using it for their jobs, ideally, but anytime is better than nothing. Training teaches people how to use the software. And it helps deal with the change.

I of course think training is important because that's my
business. ;> But I've also been there and seen how confused and
frustrated people are, for the reasons outlined earlier. They come in
to my class at 9 AM, and they're skeptical and annoyed. At 4 PM, they think they
rock. They've had a chance to see how much they know and how many
functions are easy to figure out. They've had a chance to ask those
three questions about the stuff that they can't figure out. And
they've seen that the IT group, or whoever's in charge, is committed
enough, and cares enough, to provide training.

Happy users are more productive. Happy users say hi to you in the hall rather than growling. Happy users mean you as IT director are happy. And it doesn't cost that much to get all that.

Training makes a huge difference in those six hours plus lunch.

Users are so much happier about
the switch, in general, at the end of a day of training. After four
years, I've seen a lot of attitude changes, and it's clear the
students are going to go back their desks and just tear through the
projects that were taking them ages before. They even ask for CDs of
the software, and of the workbook lab files, to take home! Honest. It happens. The change in confidence and attitude is
great—it's why I do training.

Training doesn't cost much compared to how much you save.

In comparison to how much you save with
OpenOffice.org (and with Linux if you switch to that too), the time
and money to give all your users a day of training, at your site, is
minimal. These costs cover everything, including travel and
workbooks.

I trained a small fire and rescue
organization in Wyoming for $3,000 total, including two 250-page
workbooks for each user. They saved at least $25,000 switching to
OpenOffice.org.

I trained the 300 users in a nearby
Colorado city government for about $13,000. They saved about $250,000
switching to OpenOffice.org and Linux. (They're just around the corner from me, so there were no travel expenses.)

I trained 200 users over three weeks,
half getting two days of training each, for about $15,000. Each user
got at least one 250-page workbook; some got two. It's a private
company that contracts to NASA so they didn't tell me how much they
saved ;> but I imagine it was a pretty good chunk.

An aside: Most people haven't had training on Microsoft Office, either. It's interesting how many people don't know many standard Microsoft Office features, or that Ctrl C is copy. Imagine how productive your users could be given the time to get training on all their current software, whatever it is.

Site Licenses and Educational Discounts

Yes, you say, but there are 30,000
potential users in my school district. That gets into money. I can't possibly afford trainng.

Well, that depends. You're definitely a
candidate for a site license, so that you have the right to print all
the copies you want of all my workbooks, onsite. I discount site
licenses heavily, and particularly heavily for educational
institutions. If you're thinking of switching to OpenOffice.org for
your school district, don't assume you can't afford materials for
everyone. I also charge less for training groups with site licenses.

Yes, OpenOffice.org is free. That
doesn't mean the transition is free—users need a little help
getting going, and they need to know their effort is appreciated. Change, period, whether to a new location, new software, or new processes, takes effort. But
the cost of getting users going on OpenOffice.org or StarOffice, and happy about it, isn't that high.

So think about it. Shoot me an email at training@getopenoffice.org, just
to get some more info or ask about the site license. I'm happy to
answer any questions about how to help your organization become a
lean, mean (but happy), OpenOffice.org-using machine.

March 01, 2006

Some of you have seen this page on Amazon for the past, oh,
decade. ;>

Due to weirdness with Amazon, I have not been able to get it off their site.

But! Now I am actually writing it! I've got content, it's goin' fast, it's going to be out by spring.

It's not going to be another 4-pound behemoth—I do like covering
everything but there's also an important place for an 80/20,
just-the-most-used-features, approach. The OpenOffice.org 2.0 book on
Amazon will be around 500 pages and will not include things like
master documents, macros, or basically the advanced features that are
cool but less frequently used.

I might do an advanced “Part 2” kind of book, like the Core
Java folks did with their books. But right now, we're looking at a
good solid for-everyone sort of book with emphasis on the basics.

Not to say that it will be nothing but “To make text bold, click
the B icon. See illustration at right.” This book will tell you how
to do cool stuff, powerful stuff, stuff that will make your job
easier and make you, with luck, pump your first in the air and say “I
rule!!!”

That's where you come in. I've got the main content, all the
procedures and lessons that need to be in the book. But I've got a
section for each chapter or chunk of chapters tentatively titled
OpenOffice.org Power Tools. So for each main topic area I'll include
cool powerful, not-overwhelmingly-complicated, widely applicable,
power tips.

Things like:

PDF, of course, including File > Send > Document as
PDFAttachment

Making a template and assigning it to be the one you get when you
choose File > New

I want to know what you think would be good additions to those
sections. I want the book to really be something people will find valuable and a great resource for all those specific but really essential things that can muck up your day if you can't do them or they're a pain.

So tell me. What has saved your butt with OpenOffice.org? What did you
think it couldn't do, that you really needed, and found out it could?
(Or maybe you don't know how to do it, but really wish it could?)

Please leave a comment with suggestions. (The
comments won't appear immediately; I monitor comments and trackbacks,
due to a recent spell of interesting links from the folks peddling
films of women with their ponies.) I'll repost this blog periodically to keep getting suggestions.

I'll of course credit anyone with a suggestion I use in the book.
(By submitting a comment, you're saying that's OK. blah blah legal
blah blah.)

I'll be posting parts of the book, as well, to get feedback. I want it to be clear, readable, fun if at all possible, and of course, really, really helpful.

February 24, 2006

I've updated my steps for migrating a group to OpenOffice.org, with emphasis on the human factors. There are some fun new ideas as well as expanding on some of the old ones. If this is something you're considering, take a look.

January 17, 2006

What's important is pretty much anything else. What your organization is doing: research, services, saving lives, preserving order, education. Preserving the rain forest. Rebuilding New Orleans. Job retraining. Heck, you could argue that a good pumpkin pie is essentially more important than software.

OK, the office suite software helps you do all those things I listed and a million more. But I want to point out that our goal in our eight hours a day is not to use software. It's everything else.

All right. So now think about this.

OpenOffice.org is free.

Other office suites are not.

You switch to OpenOffice.org, and you or your organization is suddenly not spending $500, or $50,000, or $5 million on your office suite licenses.

Add up all the other people or organizations who are no longer spending that money on an office suite, and suddenly we're into some serious cash.

Think about how much your city police force spends on office suite software, and about how that money could probably do some good if it were spent on, say, salaries for additional police.

Think about what that research facility down the road spends on software. Compared to the money they spend for their equipment, maybe not much, but it's money probably better spent on upping the salaries for a few poor post-docs than on office suite software.

Think about how much money the federal government spends on office suite software. Now fantasize about how you would redirect that money if you were in charge.

Amazon saved $17 million when they switched to Linux. Same principle--pay less for something that's not part of your core business.

Think about how much your state spends on office suite software for schools, and how many more teachers and books that money could buy.

A lot.

Education is one of the most important places to think about OpenOffice.org. Education is, to put it mildly, important. Plus, third graders aren't likely to complain that they're used to how Word does styles and they don't want to switch. They're open to anything new. And education isn't exactly overfunded. I live in Colorado which is either 49th or 47th in the nation in funding for education.

For educators, here's an interesting article on trends this year, including OpenOffice.org.

For anyone thinking about upgrading to Vista, here's an important blog. Dave Rosenberg states that Vista gives you an opportunity to really compare the actual cost and the actual benefits, and he quotes Jon Oltsik from Enterprise Strategy Group.

So just think about the value. Think about how much money you're spending on your office suite, and what you could do with that money that would be more important.

January 09, 2006

I worked at Sun Educational Services for a few years, and one ongoing debate was what the training books should be like. Should they offer extensive information, or a set of exercises and a skeleton for the instructor to work with? And furthermore, what type of business were we in? Education (say it to yourself with a pompous tenured sort of voice) or Training (use kind of a sarcastic tinny voice).

There was endless debate about what the difference was and which was more effective for learning software until someone, I forget who, made it all very clear. Probably a project manager who had spent a few painful years unemployed after obtaining a very lovely liberal arts education.

He or she said "Think about your sex education class."

Everyone did. It had been a long meeting and we were happy for any distraction.

We discussed what it had been like. Confusing, obscure diagrams, no one really getting to the point, and wandering out of the classroom with very little idea of what sex was, per se, much less how to do it with any degree of success.

And everybody did. And started laughing. Because that made everything a lot different. Training is typically very very distinctly different than Education. At least in many people's experiences and in the word associations we have with it.

That might be an unusual way to start talking about OpenOffice.org training, but I love that story and I think it makes it clear how important it is to have hands-on time in a lab with an expert. Training. If it's important that people do something right, then training is important. You can throw books on desks, and that does work for some people, and of course it's a handy reference. But I believe that memories of doing things are a whole lot stronger than memories of reading things. (How many of you tell long, amusing, detailed stories about when you read something?)

It's partly about attention, the difference between education/information and training. Send out a memo about how to do a better mail merge and it gets lost in the inbox. Nobody forgets entirely about a day or a week spent doing a better mail merge.

Another aspect of training, specifically for open source products like open office, is that it shows commitment. Open office training is important for giving new users not only the skills they need but to instill confidence that the organization is committed to the switch, and that the software will work. You know it'll work, but the people being transferred, who were comfortable with their old tools, don't. Open Office training makes the transition go better.

One aspect of training versus reading a book is that training has to be limited in time. Generally, people spend a day learning an office suite, maybe a couple more days learning advanced features. So the classes have to focus on the most important features, the 80/20. The 20% of features that people spend 80% of their time using. So training, at least good training, is going to be more focused.

Here's another thing. Most people never had much education or training on the office suite they use now. Much knowledge is handed down from one user to another, from Becky to Dolores to Sam, and can get changed a lot in the process. And if Becky never had an opportunity to sit down and learn the software, hands on, she might not have been able to pass on effective, productive information.

Another thing. The difference between struggling to do something the hard way, and doing something quickly and easily the smart, quick way, is big. The difference in productivity for one task might be a minute or a week. Multiply that over years and over all the people using the software, and you're looking at serious time, effort, and resources. Lots of money.

And another. People feel good when they do a good job. When they can take a tool and use it to do what they need to. Frustration makes people feel bad. As the counselor on South Park might say, “Frustration is baaaad.” Give users the gift of expertise. One of the things I love about doing training is seeing the light go on. The previously discouraged student in the third row starts saying things like "Oh my god--I could use this for our monthly Qentori documents and just do it all automatically!" I have even had students (Canadian students!) say "I'm so excited my head's going to blow off!" Just the other day, a student in my Writer class actually did a chair dance, with lots of arm-waving, when she got the send-document-as-PDF-attachment feature to work and realized how much time and effort it was going to save her. Sitting and working in class, asking questions, going through the exercises and seeing how to do things quickly and efficiently, means your users are going to be able to get that power, and the confidence that comes with it.

When users understand and control their tools, and feel like they are powerful, knowledgeable users, they like their jobs better. They do their jobs better. I might even go so far as to assert that people are more likely to make another pot of coffee when they take the last cup, they're so happy. Feeling like you're in control of your tools, and not the other way around, is a Good Thing.

So that's my plug for training. Give your software users the gift of being able to stand up at their desks in the middle of the day, throw a fist in the air, and shout “I RULE!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Postscript: My friend Kathy Sierra (also at Sun during the anecdote related at the top of this post) writes a blog on passionate users. Her learning theory post is a great guide to how to create learning, not just talking about facts in the same room as students. I can't always do all of the things she lists in training classes, but here's what I make a point of doing.

- Showing, not just blathering on about how to do something- Engaging students emotionally as much as possible; I inject a bit of humor into the learning materials, and I have a whole song and dance about the Evil Plain Indent Icon and the Wonderful Indent Icons on the Bullets and Numbering toolbar- Demonstrating potential mistakes when I show how the software works, as well as how to avoid or recover from mistakes- Using stories; the training materials are based on the premise that that student is an intern at a fictional bookstore, and the motivation for the exercises is based on the demands of a crazy marketing person; an unreasonable boss; a new advertising campaign; etc.- Fun ; for reviews, I sometimes have a Jeopardy-like game and divide the students into two teams, with chocolate for everyone at the end. Or I bring a nerf ball and have the students throw the ball around. When you catch the ball, you have to say something you learned that day, and how to do it.- Helping students feel confident; when parts of the software are weird, badly implemented, or just complicated, I make sure they know that it is. It's a lot easier, and people feel much better learning, a complicated procedure when they know it's tough and that any progress is good. I also try to show students how much they already know by showing the toolbar for Word and for Writer side by side, for instance. Students immediately see the similarities and I reinforce that they already know much of what they do in Word since the tools on the toolbar are so similar.

Since writing this post, I've checked on whether Sun offers Staroffice training and from what I can tell, they don't. They have little free things they'll give out but you can't go to Sun (at least according to their web site) for StarOffice training. I find this odd, but I find many things about Sun odd. At any rate, any training you find on OpenOffice.org training will work fine for StarOffice training, and vice versa.

See also part 1 and part 2 of an article about creating databases in the new database tool in OpenOffice.org 2.0, and the article on views in OpenOffice.org 2.0.

This is what the story is about. Everyone talks about the digital divide but nobody does anything about it, to paraphrase Twain. Well, MIT and others are doing something about it. MIT has unveiled its $100 hand-cranked laptopcomputer
to the United Nations technology summit in Tunisia. It's hoping to make a bunch more, for the poorest people in the world.

It's running Linux, of course, and I can only assume OpenOffice.org and something like Firefox are also loaded.

The machines are bright green, which is fun, and have wireless. Plus there's some kind of mesh network for peer to peer, and they crank so you can somehow generate electricity. Kind of like the mythical tv-electricity-generating exercise bike that I think somebody should invent.

Kofi Annan is all about it. When Kofi weighs in, that's important. "It is an impressive technical
achievement, able to do almost everything that larger, more expensive computers can do. It holds the promise of major advances in economic and social
development. But perhaps most important is the true meaning of 'one
laptop per child'. This is not just a matter of giving a laptop to each
child, as if bestowing on them some magical charm. The magic lies
within - within each child, within each scientist-, scholar-, or just
plain citizen-in-the-making. This initiative is meant to bring it forth
into the light of day".

The goal is to provide the machines free
of charge to children in poor countries who cannot afford computers of
their own.

Governments or anyone who wants to donate will pay for them; children will own them.

Here's a question--will Bill Gates get involved in this, since he's allll about charitable donations in third world countries? I'm thinking, look for some sort of response out of the northwest.

Brazil,
Thailand, Egypt and Nigeria are on the list to receive the first chunk of laptops.

The computers operate at 500 MHz, but since it's running Linux that's not the problem it would be with Windows.

The screen is from a portable DVD player and you can use B/W or color.

It's slated to be ready in a year or a bit more, when people have ordered and paid for 5-10 million computers.

This is going to have a huge effect on society, possibly politics, very likely women's rights--it's going to be huge.

One person learning a new program is a simple process. Decide, learn, do. But switching over ten, a thousand, or ten thousand users can be a little more involved. You get a few more things involved:

One person decides to switch. With 100 users, it's certain that at least one of them didn't want to switch.

One person can affect the attitude of many others, positively or negatively. If Chris starts working on the new program, learns to use it, and others see that, then they believe they can use it, too. If Chris doesn't try, doesn't learn, and others see her failing, they think they'll fail too.

And this is before anyone even starts complaining about, or praising, the product. How users talk about the product, especially the dominant people in your organization, really affects it. How the head of marketing talks about it, how the manager of the desktop publishers for your internal publications group talks about it, how Marge in accounting who's been there 20 years talks about it--all that matters enormously.

Anytime you do something involving a lot of people, whether it's new software or soap or sandwiches, unexpected problems arise. You really can't over-plan a project involving a lot of people.

To make the switch as calm, cool, and collected as possible, you need to plan. Plan not just the physical implementation, the installation, but plan the social and mental implementation with the people who will use it. To make a somewhat odd analogy, the issue with the space shuttle problems was not really the foam or the O rings. It was the communication between the engineers and the people who made the decision, and it was the culture that made it OK not to report problems. The physical issues with switching to the software can be handled. The most important thing you can do is make sure the human part of the transition is done well.

Here are a few thoughts based on my experience with the product, and what I’ve gathered doing training for other companies over the last four years.

1. Talk to Other People Who've Done It. Take an OpenOffice.org-Using IT Director to Lunch.Find others who are or have been in your position, and just find out what their experiences were like. You can learn so much from just talking to other people who’ve adopted the program. Get on the users@openoffice.org mailing list (www.openoffice.org) and find other people in your position who are using OpenOffice.org. Google around the Web; maybe you actually know someone at Ernie Ball Music, for instance (http://news.com.com/2008-1082-5065859.html) and can just go over there at lunch and find out how their transition went. Start or join a Yahoo discussion group just for people who are considering or in transition.

Get as much technical and cultural information from them as possible. Others' experience is really valuable.

2. Make Sure It's Got the Features Your Users Absolutely Need, and See What Additional Features It Provides.Research how OpenOffice.org works and what it can do. This task can be done by you, by your motivated IT person, or anyone else you assign to or hire for the task. But the thing is, you’ve got some core features that your users absolutely must have, some tasks they complete that they must do but might not have to do the way they’re doing.

The drawing program might
allow you to ditch your licenses for Visio or Corel or Canvas or
Illustrator. The data source connection features are extremely
powerful. Keep an eye out not just on what you already use that you have
to have, but on what you can’t do now that you could do with
OpenOffice.org.

A note on Excel macros--some people use them to do things that can be done perfectly well with Calc functions. So if you hear that the macros won't convert, ask what the macros are actually accomplishing.

If you don't find a feature at first, check around. Perhaps more than other programs,
OpenOffice.org has a high ratio of “stuff it can do” to “stuff you can
see that it can do.” For some features, it’s easy when you know how—you
just have to know how. So get googling, get a book, get a free doc
download from www.openoffice.org, get a little training, go to a seminar, ask the users@openoffice.org mailing list, etc.

Don't be afraid to mix and match. If you Sam and Francine must have some Excel macros for certain spreadsheets, then keep a few licenses. You're looking for the best solution, not necessarily purely all open source all the time.

Find the people at your organization
who just love to fiddle with software all day. and ask them (with their
managers' permission) to spend some time just dinkin' around. They'll
find stuff that everyone else misses, and they'll help start culture
that it's cool new software.

There will be at least one very specific thing that users do that you won't expect, that can't obviously be done with OpenOffice.org. (Of course, you can't convert to PDF in Microsoft Office; it's true of any software.) Really pay attention to what the tasks is actually trying to accomplish, rather than focusing on the task itself. There might be a workaround, another feature that does a similar thing, or simply an organizational, non-software solution.

For instance, if Jim really needs to have the flotsam feature, it might be because Dave always asked for documents to be delivered in flotsam format. Dave doesn't actually need it, it's just that that's what he's used to; plus Dave is leaving the organization in a month. Jetsam format might do just as well.

Consider interoperability. Take a few documents back and forth between OOo and Word, or your office suite. See how it works. Consider, and research, how many documents users receive from Microsoft Office users and need to edit, and how many users need to send to Microsoft Office users, and whether those documents need to be edited. If most or all the documents you need to send out can be sent in PDF rather than Word, you're golden. Or if the documents go between formats nicely, you're also a nice warm yellow.

3. Find Other Sources for the Cute Stuff Word and Publisher ProvideOne of the things many users really like doesn't have anything to do with the actual software. They like the goodies. Word’s vast collection of clipart is nice but isn't really all that necessary. You can get similar goodies elsewhere. The Big Box of Art has a million images and is $60 or so, and then there's the open source clip art library.

For cool templates, remind users that all their current templates can be opened successfully in OpenOffice.org. So all the pretty stuff still works. There are also many OpenOffice.org templates out there. Just google away--here are some on the OpenOffice.org site.

Publisher does not provide any decent export so all the Publisher files will be left behind. But Writer and Draw are decent alternatives, with use of the aforementioned clip art.

4. Time to Get Your Hands Dirty and Convert Some Test DocumentsExperiment with the program. Now it’s time to take OpenOffice.org out for a real spin and see what she does on your organization’s documents. Some transitions, especially now with the enhanced compatibility and filters in OpenOffice.org 2.0, go really well. Some have some interesting tweaks to make that, once made, work fine. It all depends on what your docs are like.

Here are some tips on converting documents.- Hang out in Tools > Options. There are a lot of windows here that can help. Default tab settings are a big factor. Open a text document and choose Tools > Options > Writer > General lets you fiddle with those. Tools > Options > Writer > Compatibility is another great window; fiddle with these. Try marking the Printer Metrics option first. Click the image to see if larger if you like.

Then open a Calc spreadsheet, choose Tools > Options > Calc > General, and try those settings. Click the image to see if larger if you like.

Consider which documents you actually need to convert. If you have a document you provide that doesn't actually need to be changed, just make a PDF of it and leave it as is. (You might need to use another product to make the PDF if it doesn't open nicely in OpenOffice.org.) Or print it or scan it, and leave it as is.

5. Get the Influential People On Your Side

This is what I was talking about earlier. Once you've got the program kind of figured out, invite the managers and a smattering of "regular users," including the people who other users listen to, to a lunch and learn.

Tell them the advantages, show them the software, show the cool features, let them fiddle with it, and show off the new features that you don't have with your current software. PDF comes to mind, the drawing program (File > New > Draw) comes to mind. Make some labels and mark the Synchronize checkbox on the last tab of the labels window, then show how you can make a change to one labell and click Synchronize to apply that change to all the others.

Ask for their input. Ask about how they will do their jobs day to day with the new software. Make sure you have a good ratio of people who like it, to people who might complain. Tell all the people who are invited that they're an important part of the adoption process (they are), and that you need their input to ensure that OpenOffice.org can help them do their jobs.

Before the lunch and learn, make sure you have buy-in from whoever's at the top of your organization. Make sure that he or she communicates to his reports that they need to show support for the product, or they'll have departments full of dissatisfied users who don't feel like they can do their jobs with the new software. (Nobody wants that in their department.) Have those managers then show up at the lunch and learn. Not to say "you're using it, get over it," but to show enthusiasm. Have them get a little giggly over the drawing tool (you can do cool 3D stuff) or be overly impressed by the mail merge tool. Not to put on an over-acting show; just to make sure that they demonstrate, as well as state, support and enthusiasm.

Depending on how these go, you might want to have a few.

Another idea to get influential people on board is to give them some say in how the money saved will be spent. If anti-change Sam from Accounting can tell people that he's the one responsible for switching money from the software budget to the health care plan, he might be more enthusiastic.

When you send out reports on the lunch and learn, be sure to mention that Sam, Brenda, and Lucy all had excellent suggestions, and worked hard to provide much-needed input to the IT team.

Consider schwag. Everyone on the OpenOffice.org Transition Advisory Team (your lunch and learns) gets a mug, a tshirt, something. Make'em on Cafepress.com. Order 15 to get a bulk discount. The schwag could be plain, just the OpenOffice.org logo, or be self-mocking, "I Gave the IT Team a Piece of My Mind" or a pun, "Open to Discussion: OpenOffice.org 2006 Transition Advisory Team."

6. Execute a Transition Plan. As many people say, just do it. Introduce the adoption schedule and let people know that while you’ll be giving them time, training and manuals and rewards. You absolutely must make sure everyone knows they're not going to be
thrown into the new software without help. Make sure they know that
there will be help, there will be time, there will be training and
documentation.

This is also the time to start transitioning your legacy documents to OpenOffice.org, or planning how it will occur.

The other part of this step is the tough love--make sure that people know it *is* going to happen and no amount of objections will stop it. (You've already done a lot of research and gotten a lot of feedback, so you know at this stage that switching is the right decision.) Make sure people know that Microsoft Office or their other office suite will fall off the face of the earth in three months. (Or whatever your transition timeline is.) The exception to this is if you're keeping the old software around to edit legacy documents. In this case, though, you might want to have that software on selected computers, or do something else to make sure that as of the launch date, everyone is using OpenOffice.org on new documents.

7. Offset Fear and Confusion With Information and Support.

Demonstrate how it works to the people who will be using it. People are usually going to be apprehensive about the idea of change, but you can reduce that considerably just by doing a few seminars, demos, lunch and learns, and other short and reassuring demonstrations of what it’s going to be like. Make sure everyone in the organization comes to at least one session. Show the object bars at the top of each application, for instance. The Word and Writer, and Excel and Calc object bars, look very similar. Then slowly show how a few of the core procedures will be performed. Simply knowing what the change is going to be like, ahead of time, alleviates some fear and change resistance. I’ve seen this repeatedly when I do training.

Give short quick-reference handouts at the end of each presentation, so that everyone has at least a little documentation, before they even touch the software.

Again, consider schwag. Give a magnet, button, sticker, etc. to everyone who asks a question during the presentation. Cafepress.com is a goodplace to do this. The person who asks the most questions (constructive ones) might get a USB drive or a small MP3 player or another prize.

8. Show Appreciation.

People will be happier doing just about anything if you recognize the effort they're putting into it publicly. In all communications, in training, in demos, etc., be sure to recognize that they will be the ones learning the new product, that this is a significant task, and that you appreciate it.

Another thing you can do is just plain provide rewards. Suggestions include prizes for:

The department that completely switches
to OpenOffice.org first

The person who logs the most “Cool
OpenOffice.org Tips” on the company intranet

The person who
does the most document conversion.

Motivational rewards can be anything--a department pizza party or trip to the waterslides, an extra day off on a three-day weekend, a weekend trip for two to the nearby national park.
Whatever works, based on your people and the money you’re saving.

9. Teach Users How to Use the Product.

It's important to have OpenOffice training. The training can take
many forms. It can be one book and your in-house open source
enthusiast (who will be patient with users who have less experience than he or she does). You can send everyone in the organization to OpenOffice.org
training or have someone come onsite to train. You can hire someone to teach your internal trainers. You can obtain OpenOffice.org books, training materials, or both. Make sure that everyone at least has a reference book for the department to use.

Make sure everyone has used the product before they have to start using it. You wouldn't give someone a car who didn't know how to drive. Give'em a chance to learn before they have to do their job.

Make sure that everyone has a CD to use it at home. When I do training, at least half the people in each class want a CD to use at home.

10. Consider an Ongoing Joke or a Big Payoff.When I was at Great Plains Software, our main architect Dave Gaboury wore a Great Plains Dynamics tshirt every day for a year and a half until our Dynamics product shipped. (He had seven.) Maybe for your Openoffice.org project, the IT head wears the same OpenOffice.org project tshirt until everyone is up and running on the software, or maybe he or she dies their hair green, or tries out for American Idol, if all the departments are up and running successfully by the official transition date.

11. Make the Official Switch.As promised, make it happen. Take the other office suite off all desktops (unless you still need it some places as noted above). People will use what's familiar, if they can. It's like when I went to France in college--I hung out with my friend Stephanie who spoke French much better than I did. When she left Rennes for Paris for her internship--well, gosh, my French got a lot better when I had to speak it and understand it. Go figure. ;>

October 13, 2005

I've got a fever, and the only prescription is to tell people about OpenOffice.org and StarOffice.

Here's the story.

In 1999, I was working at Sun when they bought StarOffice. A couple years later when I left, no one outside Sun had heard of StarOffice. I had finished a book on StarOffice but couldn't really recommend it as a great replacement for Microsoft Office for everyone.

A year later at BEA, a few people had heard of StarOffice, and OpenOffice.org was just beginning. And with OpenOffice.org and subsequent dot releases, the program got better. I got to the point of being able to recommend OpenOffice.org to most people.

And now I can recommend OpenOffice.org without qualification, 99% of the time, as an excellent replacement for Microsoft Office, WordPerfect or, god help you, Wordstar. I really wish I could also say that now everyone I talk to has heard about OpenOffice.org and StarOffice and at least knows to consider it as a replacement.

Not so much.

Here's this great product, absolutely free, that hardly anyone has heard of. This is frustrating to me, not just because professionally I need to work hard to just inform potential clients that there is a great product out there for them. It's frustrating because I've got a jones to get good free software out to everyone, to show people how powerful it is, and there's very little information flowing about it.

Sun is spectacularly bad at marketing so it's really no surprise, in the end. Disappointing, but not a surprise. The OpenOffice.org community is doing its best but as a group of volunteers, against the mighty PR machine of Microsoft Office, it's also not surprising that more people know Kato Kalin's middle name than about either StarOffice or OpenOffice.org.

But then a few things happened.

Along came Google. A somewhat successful company, shall we say. They announced a partnership with Sun to do various things with Java and OpenOffice.org. The details are still fuzzy on OpenOffice.org, but if Google has anything to do with getting OpenOffice.org out to the masses, I believe it's going to change everything about how we create documents.

My friend Kathy Sierra's blog has been going gangbusters, and she swore to me that blogs are the way to go to make a point and broadcast a message.

And my editor gave me a few extra months to get out the OpenOffice.org 2.0 book since things are up in the air a bit, with the release date and the arrangement with Google. (Thanks, Greg.)

So I'm feeling hopeful again and rip-roaring ready to show you how OpenOffice.org and StarOffice are really good. Not perfect, not substitutes for all DTP applications, but such a great alternative to Microsoft Office and other suites.

And free, of course.

Enough Already. What Is This Blog Going to Have in It?

I'm going to run the gamut—simple procedures for people new to the program, tips and tricks, advanced procedures from my workbooks, plus more process-oriented thoughts on document organization, design, best ways to use the features, converting documents. My main goal is my mantra—OpenOffice.org is cool, here's how to use it to make your life easier. Without too much hitting you over the head, and always being realistic.